Opposition Prepares for Victory in Australia's Victoria State

By Wendy Pugh -
Nov 28, 2010

The Liberal-National Coalition
prepared to form government in Victoria, Australia’s second-most
populous state, for the first time in 11 years after the Labor
Party led by John Brumby lost seats in an election two days ago.

The Victorian Electoral Commission yesterday began tallying
some of the 550,000 votes lodged before the election as the
count focused on a decisive contest in the seat of Bentleigh.
Brumby earlier yesterday forecast a hung parliament and said
Labor was unlikely to gain a majority.

Labor held 55 of the 88 seats in parliament, compared with
the Liberals’ 23, the Nationals with 9 and one independent
before the election. The coalition may have won 44 seats and
Labor 43, with one seat in doubt, the Herald Sun newspaper said
before counting of pre-poll votes in Bentleigh. A total of 45
seats is needed to win.

Brumby, who became leader in 2007 after Steve Bracks
resigned, last year steered Victoria through Australia’s worst
wildfires, when 173 people died in what has become known as
Black Saturday, and international criticism of attacks on Indian
students. Labor won state elections in 2002 and 2006.

The election was fought on issues including health care,
education, improving public transport and law and order.

“The coalition is on the verge of forming government and
the Brumby government is on the verge of defeat,” Nick Economou,
a political scientist at Melbourne-based Monash University said
yesterday by phone.

Seat Count

“I don’t want to get into hypotheticals,” Brumby told
reporters. “I don’t think it’s fair to the people of Victoria
to call seats before they’re counted.”

The swing may have reflected voter fatigue with Labor, even
as the state economy was strong and the government remained
functional, Economou said.

“The voters were no longer impressed by the government’s
policy successes and took more notice of its failures,” he said.

The Liberals had 38.3 percent of first preference votes,
Labor 36.9 percent, the Greens 10.6 percent and the Nationals
6.6 percent, according to the commission’s website as of 1:03
a.m. in Melbourne, with 68.5 percent of the vote counted.